Thin Clients Trump PCs On Energy Consumption

March 26, 2008

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

The choice of thin clients over PCs on the business desktop has reduced CO2 emissions in Western Europe by 166,000 tonnes in 2007 – equivalent to the emissions of more than 540 return flights from London to New York, according to research carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany for IGEL Technology, a thin client vendor.

“Energy consumption when in operation was up to 50 percent lower than for conventional PCs,” concluded Dr Hartmut Pflaum, the Fraunhofer researcher. “While PCs consume about 85 watts on average, thin clients including their server get by with 40 to 50 watts. In view of climate change and the need to reduce CO2 emissions, this is an important factor.”

With IDC figures reporting just over 3.4m thin clients sold in Western Europe since 2004 and an average machine lifecycle of 4 years, the research finds that thin client-based businesses have reduced CO2 emissions by 166,000 tonne in 2007.

The move to thin clients can save a company 25 percent in power savings, according to a recent report from Forrester.

As InfoWorld reports, the lower power bills can be attributed to the fact that thin clients “consume anywhere from 6 to 50 watts – far less than the 150 to 350 watts used by typical PCs.” They have a second green advantage, a longer lifecycle than PCs.

When Jenny Craig switched over to thin clients, the system ended up using 90 percent less energy than the PCs it replaced.

The thin client industry has just over 10 percent of the commercial desktops across Western Europe, according to the IGEL report.

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Advertisers

Make sustainability part of your strategy.

Get equipped at the SAP Sustainability Resource Center. >>

Unclear about the EPA's new GHG Rule?

Learn how it could affect your business. >>

EPA mandatory emissions reporting starts Jan 1st

CSA Standards can help your organization get ready for compliance. Find out how. >>

Product Environmental Compliance Best Practices

How to achieve compliance at a significantly lower cost. Download the full report. >>

Join the Discussion

Reader Comments

Why don’t we see a chart showing the increased power consumption in the data center as a result of thin clients? If a savings is still there, great, but you can’t just show half of the calculation for savings when we all understand that the processing power and storage are shifted to servers and SAN’s.

Jeremy | April 21st, 2008

Thin client electrical and environmental savings can be better than those reported in this article. Symbio Technologies offers a stateless thin client that utilizes 4 watts of electricity. Also, because it is 100% solid state, fanless, and stateless (no operating systems, applications, file systems, or network addresses), it does not become obsolete in just 4 years (like many of the embedded OS varieties do). It can last through a number of typical “refresh” (ie throw away) cycles.

It is real. Check it out at http://www.symbio-technologies.com

Lew Tischler | June 16th, 2008

Recent Daily News [ see all ]

11/25/2009
11/24/2009
11/23/2009

Tour of Sustainable Facilities at Univeristy of Arizona

Charts [ see all ]

Government Intervention Required to Drive “Green” Technology

62% of Firms Assign Environmental Team for Green Goals

European Paper Industry Cuts CO2 Emissions by 42% since 1990

S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks

Jobs

View All Jobs >> Post a Job >>

Comments and Discussions

Jetset1 on Energy-Savings Claims Don’t Add Up for Microsoft’s Windows 7
"This article is wrong. If your PC is less than a few years old,..."

Iain on McD’s in Germany Trades Red for Green In Logo
"Now if only their food was healthy and nutritious."

Phil on Climate Scientists Alleged to Have Manipulated Data
"After reading all the comments it seems obvious, to me, that the individuals populating..."

Marc Hudson on McD’s in Germany Trades Red for Green In Logo
"where will the stone be mined from- under what labor rights conditions? Will the..."

Clyde on Climate Scientists Alleged to Have Manipulated Data
"This just shows all the Global Warming freaks out there are a bunch of criminals cut from..."

Car Rental Singapore on News Corp. Taps Hara for Energy Efficiency, Environmental Management
"Energy reduction is a good thing. We need to save the..."

Meme Mine on WWF, WRI Make Last-Minute Pitches on Climate Change
"To the voting public, what the scientists say is irrelevant anymore for if you read..."

Environmental Leader